The Stockman statue at Newcastle Waters

Newcastle Waters (including Elliott)
Historic cattle station which has become a monument to the hardship of life in the Territory.
Newcastle Waters is a large and historic cattle station located 777 km north of Alice Springs and 705 km south from Darwin. It is also the name of the river running north from Lake Woods which passes through the station.

The explorer John McDouall Stuart reached the area on 23 May 1861 and recorded in his diary: 'we came across a splendid reach of water about 150 yards wide. This I have named Newcastle Waters after His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, The Secretary for the Colonies'. Stuart established a base camp near the present site of the station.

The development of the Overland Telegraph saw the establishment of a relay station at Newcastle Waters in 1870-71.

In the early 1880s the pastoral lease at Newcastle Waters Station was taken up by Dr. W. J. Browne from Adelaide who had earlier established Springvale station near Katherine. Browne employed Alfred Giles to administer his extensive holdings and, as part of his managerial duties, Giles arranged for the D'Arcy Uhr to overland cattle from western Queensland to stock Newcastle Waters. This was done in 1883.

Browne's pastoral investments failed and in 1895 he was forced to sell the Newcastle Waters Pastoral Lease to John Lewis of Adelaide. The Lewis family held the lease for over 50 years.

All Northern Territory pastoralists were confronted with the problem of transportation. Inadequate stock routes meant that while cattle could be raised in the Territory it was almost impossible, particularly during periods of drought, to get them to the markets. Stock routes had been established but they were only as reliable as the rainfall - and that wasn't reliable at all.

The famous overlander Nat Buchanan had pioneered the Barkly Stock route from the Overland Telegraph Line to western Queensland and in 1886 G. R. Hedley successfully traversed the Murranji track from Victoria River to Newcastle Waters. A few months later Nat Buchanan and Sam Croker took the first stock across the route. They were guided by Mudbarra Aborigines firstly to Murranji waterhole 80 km west of Newcastle Waters and then to Yellow Waterhole a further 80 km on.

The Murranji track, which takes its name from a desert frog capable of living underground for long periods without water, reduced the long east-west route via Katherine by over 600 km. However the 250 km trek from the Victoria River to Newcastle Waters was without permanent water and consequently very unreliable. Even pastoralists who were desperate for markets could not risk the losses which such a journey involved. In 1917 the government let a contract for the sinking of bores along the track. This did much to help the growth of Newcastle Waters. The town became a depot for the construction teams.

Syd Peacock won the contract to complete the 13 bores between Anthony's Lagoon to the east and Yellow Waterhole to the west. His plant consisted of six horse drawn wagons and a stationary steam engine. Work was completed in September 1924. The 13 bores along the stock route were spaced every 30 km.

The number of cattle on the route increased steadily. By 1942 some 62 000 cattle were using the east-west stock route. This rose to 140 000 in 1944. The route became so overcrowded that new mobs of cattle would arrive at bores before the storage tanks had filled after the departure of the previous mob.

The Murranji track acquired a reputation as one of the most hazardous and treacherous stock routes in Australia. At least 11 drovers died attempting to make the crossing.

In 1930 the Government resumed one square mile from Newcastle Waters Station for a town site. It was an obvious location because, apart from the cattle station, the area already contained a Police Station and Works Department depot.

The township was economically dependent on droving and the arrival of road trains meant that by the early 1960s it had been reduced to a virtual ghost town.

Newcastle Waters played an interesting role in the history of Australian aviation. Ross and Keith Smith's flight from England to Australia in 1919 required the construction of a number of strips for refuelling. The Smith brothers aeroplane needed to refuel at Darwin, Katherine and Newcastle Waters before flying on to Queensland.

A ground crew under the leadership of Hudson Fysh was employed to organise the logistics. Fysh later wrote 'at Newcastle Waters we made history by getting work started on North Australia's first cleared aerodrome'. By 1935 Qantas Empire Air Services was using the Newcastle Waters landing strip as a link in its mail and passenger run but the runway proved unsatisfactory and the service was halted in November 1937.

Things to see:  

Newcastle Waters
Remnants of Newcastle Waters are now open for inspection and Jones's Store, known as George Man Fong's house, has been preserved as a museum.

Undoubtedly the most interesting building in the town is The Junction Hotel which was built in the early 1930s by Jack Sergeant.

The author Keith Willey wrote that 'the raucous history of this drover's pub had begun in the early 1930s when Jack Sargent gathered a bunch of his debtors and put them to work building a hotel out of scraps of old windmills abandoned at stock route bores. It was a fair exchange for in the finish Sargent had his hotel and his helpers names were wiped off the slate at the store.'

Today it is easy to imagine what the pub must have been like in its heyday. It has been closed since 1960 but still it has an air of desperation about it.

Elliott
23 km to the south of Newcastle Waters is the small town of Elliott, a stopover point on the Stuart Highway halfway between Alice Springs and Darwin. It has a population of 600 (500 Aborigines and 100 whites) and is the main administrative centre for the region. One of the few delights of the town is the superb garden outside the council building. With its interesting display of native flora it stands in sharp contrast to the surrounding desert.

The township was established during World War II as an interim camp for troops heading north. It was named after the camp commander, a certain Captain Elliott. The town has a primary school, police station and health centre.

Anthony Lagoon
Nearby, at least in Northern Territory terms, is Anthony Lagoon (249 km east of the town - take the turnoff 20 km south of Elliott). The lagoon, a large and permanent water supply on the Creswell Creek, was discovered by Ernest Favenc in 1878 and quickly became a vital watering hole on the stock routes from the Kimberleys to Queensland. In 1895 a police station was established near the Anthony Lagoon cattle station to monitor the movement of cattle in the area. It became a camp for cattle drovers and a place where the local Aborigines made contact with the whites moving through the area.

	Hotels
	Elliott Hotel Stuart Hwy Elliot Newcastle Waters NT 0862 Telephone: (08) 8969 2069
	Caravan Parks
	Elliott Caravan Park Stuart Hwy Elliott Newcastle Waters NT 0862 Telephone: (08) 8969 2037 Rating: *
	Halfway Caravan Park Stuart Hwy Elliott Newcastle Waters NT 0862 Telephone: (08) 8969 2025 Rating: *
	Restaurants
	Elliott Hotel Stuart Hwy Elliott Newcastle Waters NT 0862 Telephone: (08) 8969 2069